An exposé in The Atlantic magazine reveals how one of the world’s largest private investigation firms, Kroll, hired by oil giant Chevron, tried to recruit an American journalist to undermine a massive $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron brought by the residents of the Ecuadorian Amazon. We speak with the journalist, Mary Cuddehe, and with Han Shan, the coordinator for Amazon Watch’s Clean Up Ecuador campaign. [includes rush...

Last week a federal court in Manhattan ordered a documentary filmmaker to hand over to Chevron hundreds of hours of footage. Joseph Berlinger’s award-winning film, Crude: The Real Price of Oil, chronicles the struggle of indigenous Ecuadorians against ChevronTexaco’s oil contamination of their land. It focuses on the seventeen-year legal battle between Chevron and 30,000 Ecuadorians who say their land, rivers, wells, livestock and bodies were...

Alberto Acosta is the Former President of the Constituent Assembly as well as a former minister of Energy in Ecuador. Democracy Now! producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous caught up with Acosta at the World People’s Summit on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia last week.

As delegates discuss various ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, our next guest has a simple message: keep untapped oil in the ground. Ivonne Yanez is an environmental activist from Ecuador, one of the larger oil producing countries in Latin America. Ecuador is believed to be sitting on an oil reserve of hundreds of millions of barrels. But the oil is located in the Yasuni National Park, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet....

Today is Valentine’s Day, and a lot of people are going to give or receive roses. We speak with Ross Wehner about his article in Mother Jones magazine, "Deflowering Ecuador," which documents the harsh conditions faced by workers in Ecuador’s booming rose industry. From Ecuador, we’re joined by Diego Bonifaz, mayor of Cayambe. And from Oregon, we speak with organic farmer Paul Sansone.